Kingsman

I will say this though: lmao wow, the US government cannot get a break, one year their president's a douche and gets his head blown up, and literally the next year his replacement's possibly an even bigger shit and gets his ass impeached. Vaughn just loves America in this universe

Honestly that's another critique that you could make against this film: They just kind of gloss over the fact that most of the world leaders, and quite a few normal people, died when Valentine executed his plan (and when Merlin sabotaged those chips in their heads). You could have done something cool with the chaos and uncertainty that that would have caused around the world. But instead, it's like it never happened. Disappointing.

edited 23rd Sep '17 5:20:41 PM by Punisher286

The only real acknowledgement of it comes from Poppy's explanation for how she was able to nab Elton John and possibly the fact that Eggsy's friend Ryan is nowhere to be seen while Jamal's A-okay. But then again, considering what Vaughn's goals seem to be with these films, I wasn't too surprised that it wasn't focused on much.

I'm just hoping this movie makes enough money that they'll make a sequel that can improve on this one. Apparently Vaughn wants The Rock to be the villain of a third film, and that would honestly be really fun to see if they go just the right amount of over the top with him. Or, like, give us a Statesman spinoff or something. Starring Halle Berry as Whiskey.

Same, like despite my mixed feelings, I don't want this to end up flopping in the coming weeks. I want that sequel—they need to learn from their mistakes, and I need to know what these mysterious plans are that Vaughn has for Eggsy, I wanna know if I'm right about my prediction with Merlin, I need to know. >___>

edited 23rd Sep '17 10:06:08 PM by BlackRevolver

And And give a break to the Americans for once. I too expected a more active companionship between the two agencies to reflect the times where the US and UK stood together for many years since 1941.

Yeah, I was bothered about the whole 'Uh, didn't all of the world's leaders just... die a year ago?' and the lack of continuity on that. I figure that's probably more due to the fact that they didn't plan a sequel in the first place similar to Harry Hart's death which they said they'd never have done had they known they'd have gotten a sequel.

I agree that the whole POTUS plotline didn't feel like it went anywhere since Logically, I expected him to refuse to cure anyone at all and let them die anyone since SOMEONE still needs to distrubute the cure, but that never happens. Especially since it never feels like he's an actual antagonist. Villain, yes, but the heroes never confront him ever. Plus, Poppy never finds out about the betrayal. But I didn't think the plotline in of itself was a bad idea, it had some good commentary, and could have been better executed.

I just took the 'Americans are bad guys' thing as a inversion of the 'British Bad Guy' trope we've had for years. Now its the excessivly annoying Americans who are evil every time.

I actually kind of liked Charlie as The Dragon - and even kinda wished they kept him on instead of killing him off, and just having him get more cybernetic with each sequel and bouncing from villain to villain.

And as for the movie in general, I quite liked it - unexpectedly gruesome in parts, and excellent action scenes.

lol I don't know how one can see TGC as "unepectedly" gruesome when it looked like it had less actual blood this time around. Unless we're talking about the cannibalism. The exploding eyes and bloody noses that could rival an anime were too, well, cartoonish for me to really be grossed out by it.

Saw it earlier today, and while I'm still processing my thoughts on the subject I can say that while I enjoyed it, I didn't do so as much as with the first one... and I'm pretty sure it's not because a lack of a darkly hilarious scene like the 'splodey head music video from the first movie.

On the other hand, I was actually a little bit surprised (and pleasantly so) that they didn't use the presidential subplot as an excuse to take cheap jabs at Trump. Judging from the (d)Emmy awards show the other day, that's apparently supposed to be a requirement of entertainment media nowadays.

In regards to Roxy's fate, while it wasn't dwelled on much other than a comment here and there and the drunken sobbing scene, none of the others got much mention either. I wouldn't have minded more air time (so to speak) for the character, but apparently I'm the only one in this thread who isn't really bothered by the character's fate.

edited 24th Sep '17 10:44:03 PM by Nohbody

I honestly would believe that tyrannous jackass would do all of that.

The President honestly struck me as a lot more depraved than Poppy, even though he never once ground someone up into hamburger helper. He was the more mundane, Trumpist type of villain - not one whit of care for those deemed "unfit to be called American / not real Americans", while trying to make the veneer of care able to be seen.

So, maybe rather the Evil!POTUS subplot's issue is that it doesn't get confronted by the actual heroes (hence, Villain but not Antagonist) and maybe its comentary that, while kind of clever and somewhat grounded in history, maybe just in the wrong movie compared to the delightfully hammy likes of Poppy and everyone else?

I loved the POTUS not giving a shit about Poppy's plan, but that also made her less threatening as a villain. Poppy died never knowing the president's treachery and I would have liked to see her confront him over it and show him she's not to be fucked with.

edited 25th Sep '17 5:10:59 AM by Nightwire

(Major spoilers in the link) So according to Mark Strong himself, the reason why we have BTS photos of Merlin walking around on the wedding set, yet Merlin appears to have been left dead in the final cut, is because test audience "felt cheated" by the ending where he actually lived. Not gonna lie, I'm just a little peeved at this test audience now.

Honestly my main issue with Merlin's death is that we got the whole scene with the lawyer showing that the landmines can be remotely disabled. makes it seem very odd to have that scene and then not have Merlin either use one of the watches or have the others find the controls.

The layers of bullshit keep piling up.

It's so unnecessary too.

Two unnecessary deaths of major characters, and on unnecessary resurrection. Yeah sounds about right.

You know, the most unrealistic thing in this movie is that Fox News doesn't try to spin the death of billions of drug users as a good thing.

@Vaughn: Also why only Fox News?! If you're not gonna have them look that hammish-ly evil, what's the point of only them? "MURICA"?

It's a 20th Century Fox movie. It's probably a cheaper rights thing.

...Poppy really was an amazingly ridiculous villain - not many antagonists can lay claim to "opened my own amusement park in Cambodia, fed my disloyal underling to my robot dogs."

And she has a man with a mechanical arm as The Dragon.

Now that I think on it, she should've gotten more focus as the villain instead of the President Evil. Like, have Charlie off the President or something.

Really? I thought that the POTUS didn't have enough focus. Or, at the very least, his deception of Poppy never gets revealed to her (which seems really odd?) and, even though he's a villain by all accounts, he never really gets treated as an antagonist. The heroes never meet or defeat him. They easily could have pulled off a climax where the drugs are released, but the POTUS refuses to actually let anyone get cured.

Though, maybe that's one of the things that dragged the first cut of the film to 3 hours and 40 mins.

Hell, I was shocked the secretary woman was even able to get her job back after such an event.

edited 28th Sep '17 2:52:35 AM by InkDagger

Yeah President Mc Mustache Twirler and his entire plotline feel really disconnected from the main ones, and not in a good way. It really does feel like two separate plots awkwardly spliced together into one.

And yeah, the thought that the connective tissue between them was one of the things excised in favor of a shorter running time (and the fact that Vaughn thought that THIS movie needed to be over three and a half hours long is ludicrous) occurred to me as well.

edited 28th Sep '17 11:02:21 AM by Punisher286

Regarding my earlier comment about surprise at not including jabs at Trump, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly Vaughn says that he did have two jabs at him^* Poppy voicing a wish to host The Apprentice, which Trump hosted 2008-2017, and the Oval Office done up in gold "bling") but removed them because he thought it would detract from the entertainment. "If you go too far — if movies get political when they’re meant to be fun — then it weighs everything down a bit too much."

(And on a related note, in the first film he said that while the President in that movie resembled Obama it wasn't actually him, who Vaughan said was "a good man".)

—

Also from EW, K2 knocked the 2017 It remake from the top slot, with a US box office over the opening weekend of $39M.

For comparison, while the first Kingsman movie pulled in $41.8M on its opening weekend, that was a four day weekend in the US (President's Day). Going by Fri-Sun for more accurate comparison purposes, in the US the original made $36.2M on its opening weekend.

edited 28th Sep '17 1:12:45 PM by Nohbody